so as to convert him into a slave, is likely to give rise to a class of loans which inspire nothing but abhorrence—­money lent with the foreknowledge that the borrower will be unable to repay it, but also in the conviction that the value of his person as a slave will make good the loss; thus reducing him to a condition of extreme misery, for the purpose sometimes of aggrandizing, sometimes of enriching, the lender.  Now the foundation on which the respect for contracts rests, under a good law of debtor and creditor, is the very reverse of this.  It rests on the firm conviction that such contracts are advantageous to both parties as a class, and that to break up the confidence essential to their existence would produce extensive mischief throughout all society.  The man whose reverence for the obligation of a contract is now the most profound, would have entertained a very different sentiment if he had witnessed the dealings of lender and borrower at Athens under the old ante-Solonian law.  The oligarchy had tried their best to enforce this law of debtor and creditor with its disastrous series of contracts, and the only reason why they consented to invoke the aid of Solon was because they had lost the power of enforcing it any longer, in consequence of the newly awakened courage and combination of the people.  That which they could not do for themselves, Solon could not have done for them, even had he been willing.  Nor had he in his position the means either of exempting or compensating those creditors who, separately taken, were open to no reproach; indeed, in following his proceedings, we see plainly that he thought compensation due, not to the creditors, but to the past sufferings of the enslaved debtor, since he redeemed several of them from foreign captivity, and brought them back to their homes.  It is certain that no measure simply and exclusively prospective would have sufficed for the emergency.  There was an absolute necessity for overruling all that class of preexisting rights which had produced so violent a social fever.  While, therefore, to this extent, the Seisachtheia cannot be acquitted of injustice, we may confidently affirm that the injustice inflicted was an indispensable price paid for the maintenance of the peace of society, and for the final abrogation of a disastrous system as regarded insolvents.  And the feeling as well as the legislation universal in the modern European world, by interdicting beforehand all contracts for selling a man’s person or that of his children into slavery, goes far to sanction practically the Solonian repudiation.

One thing is never to be forgotten in regard to this measure, combined with the concurrent amendments introduced by Solon in the law—­it settled finally the question to which it referred.  Never again do we hear of the law of debtor and creditor as disturbing Athenian tranquillity.  The general sentiment which grew up at Athens, under the Solonian money-law and under the democratical government, was one of